


[notfic] WHAT IF THERE WERE BABIES

by la_dissonance, TheWrongKindOfPC



Category: Bandom, Empires, Gold Motel, musician RPF
Genre: Crack, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Fpreg, Long-Distance Relationship, Polyamory, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-22
Updated: 2012-07-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 12:48:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/466459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_dissonance/pseuds/la_dissonance, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SPOILER ALERT THERE ARE BABIES. (In which a tour hookup has ~unexpected consequences.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	[notfic] WHAT IF THERE WERE BABIES

**Author's Note:**

> Last week, Gold Motel played a show with Laura Stevenson and the Cans, which is apparently all the instigation my brain needs to start shipping them like I'm FedEx. It's not really important to know who Laura Stevenson is to read this fic, aside from the fact that she is highly talented and adorable and fronts an indie band full of hipster dudes just like Greta does. She's based in Brooklyn and writes songs about art and sadness and cats and the fact that writing is hard. (She is my favorite.) You can peruse her band's official website [here](http://laurastevensonandthecans.com), or go coo over pictures of her face [here](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&biw=959&bih=515&q=%22laura+stevenson%22&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=Q64MUJaDO-Ty0gGU3PyTBA).

As all excellent fic does, this started on twitter:

if this were a longer tour I'd totally use it as justification to write all the laura stevenson/greta fic in the woooorld

I WISH YOU WOULD ANYWAY

MAYBE I WILL >:) 

the hard part will be coming up with a plot other than "and then they were adorable and I loved them a lot"

ummmmm, they were slightly awkward and flirty around each other? They sang some pretty songs? A duet? =ALL THE PLOT I NEED.

oooooo what about Laura is shy and Greta is flirty and then they sing a duet! (What should they sing?)

YES! Also, they should sing something really cheesy, and make their bands sort of secretly roll their eyes. You Are My Sunshine? OH OH OH OR "JACKSON" but only because it is my most favorite duet, and they can fight over who is June Carter and who is Johnny Cash, but only in a "No, you would be really good at--" "No YOU really would--" kind of way...

MOST ADORABLE OMG I CAN TOTALLY SEE IT <3____<3

I CAN TOOOOOO, It is the most adorable image!

(and then they would make out)

(CLEARLY) (BEST IDEA)

Alright SO, it is established that Laura Stevenson and Greta meet cute at the Bowery show and sing a duet as an encore and make out in the green room a little bit and then maybe Laura takes Greta home after because hey, she lives right in Brooklyn and what's life without a few cut bus curfews? So they hook up and it's awesome and neither of them get any sleep and a million fantastic orgasms are had by all, but then Greta has to run back to her band at early o'clock the next morning. They exchange numbers but there's a mutual understanding that this was just a really awesome one-off; they live on opposite ends of the country and are both always on tours that will probably never line up again, best not get expectations up, etc etc :(

But THEN, a month or so later, one of them (we can have it be Greta for convenience) notices she's missed her period and she's feeling a little queasy in the mornings, and she knows she hasn't had dude sex in months, but she goes to Walgreens and gets a pregnancy test just to put her mind at ease, and.............it says she's actually pregnant. But the ONLY person she's slept with within the right timeframe was Laura, and while there were plenty of bodily fluids swapped that night she's 99.999% certain none of them had sperm in them. So. She calls Laura. Just to, you know, check if this is something that's ever happened to her too. And when Laura picks up she sounds really surprised and delighted that Greta would call, and Greta's distracted from her original purpose for a while because hey, that might not have been quite as one-off as she'd thought, she maybe has a little bit of a crush going here. 

Eventually Greta gets around to the point of her call, and Laura confirms that no, she's never been the cause of any inexplicable pregnancies that she's known of, and Greta's like oh okay I just had to ask, you're probably going to hang up and laugh at me, and then goes and makes an appointment with her gyno. 

All goes as well as it can when you're dealing with a sudden unplanned (& potentially immaculately conceived) pregnancy, until a couple weeks later when Laura calls Greta. She sounds different this time, all concerned and nervous, and she leads right off with "So you're probably going to think I'm a crazy person and never want to talk to me again, but.............I'm pregnant too?"

Greta's just like wtf wtfffffff; this is the kind of stuff that happens in daytime TV shows, not her real life. At the same time she's glad Laura told her, because at least now they can commiserate with each other over the weirdness of it all. it's not like Greta has a ton of other people she can talk about even normal, non-mysterious reproductive stuff with; most of her friends are dudes.

"It's almost like we got each other pregnant, isn't it?" she says, and then immediately follows it up with "oh my god, that sounds completely bonkers, please forget I said that," and nervously giggles a lot. It's sort of ridiculously charming. 

"Right? the timing works out and everything, what are the odds? Sorry, forgetting now," Greta says.

"It's weird though, because unless someone came in and jizzed all over my dildo right before we used it — which is totally gross and didn't happen, I seriously keep all my toys really clean — I have no idea what it could possibly be...." 

"Mmm," Greta says, because seriously, neither does she. "Some stranger crawled in the window and roofied us both? Sorry, now I'm being gross and awful."

"Ew ew, I don't even want to think about it," Laura says, and Greta can practically hear the scrunched-up face she's making. 

"Anyway, I remember pretty much every second of that night in a ton of detail, there's no way I spent some of it unconscious and didn't notice," Greta says, blushing. It's kind of embarrassing how well she remembers all of that.

"Me too," Laura says. "I'm, um, glad we agree on that count."

"Have you decided if you're going to keep it?" Greta asks in order to steer the subject away from ~awkward sexual tension, and then immediately apologizes because it's none of her business.

Laura waves off her apologies, though. "I actually haven't told anybody about it besides you, yet. I definitely do not want a kid right now, no sir, but my sister has been trying to get pregnant for like, years, so this is actually kind of perfect?"

"Oh good, me either," Greta says. It's an immense relief to be able to say this to someone; out of all the female acquaintances she keeps up with on facebook, it seems like every last one is either married with kids or gearing up to get that way. It's not that she doesn't want to have the baby, so much as she doesn't want anyone to _know_ she's having it. Interview questions from the time people found out until the rest of eternity would be nothing but _omg single mother how do you juggle a music career and a family???_ and probably tons of speculation about who the father is, and that is something Greta just does not want to deal with, ever. She's not averse to *having* a baby though, if she could get around the media bullshit and had plenty of help taking care of it.....none of the guys in her band have expressed any interest in parenthood, but who knows, sometimes people contain hidden depths. 

"I should ask Bill for tips on how to keep a baby secret, see if he has anything he wishes he'd done the last time," Greta says, and then the rest of the conversation is devoted to explaining Wikipedia Nonsense and by extension Bill Beckett. 

-

In a perfect world, they agree that they would go to a fancy doctor — Laura's sister's fertility specialist would be a good place to start — and get to the bottom of this, but since they're both poor musicians with shitty health insurance, that's not really a possibility. 

They do call and check in on each other every couple of days, though. It's nice to have someone to talk to who doesn't think your pregnancy was from an inadvisable tour one night stand (Greta's story when she decided her band needed to know) or an inadvisable and short-lived reunion with an ex (Laura's story for her sister). Those conversations are generally a string of _what the fuck, seriously though what the fuck_ , with a good dose of _bodies are WEIRD, right??_ followed by an hour or so of convivial chatting about topics entirely baby-unrelated. It's nice being friends with someone who knows all about being the headlining girl in a band full of dudes firsthand; Greta quickly finds that she can't imagine what life was like before she knew Laura. 

Gold motel tours until it would start being apparent to observant audience members (so, everyone) that Greta's expecting, and then they take a break to record an EP. 

Somehow, through mysterious and suspiciously convenient-to-the-story channels since he isn't actually their boss anymore, Pete hears about Greta's pregnancy and pays a visit to their studio to investigate for himself. 

Pete has done all kinds of weird shit, and Greta's known him since forever, so she feels okay telling him about the actual circumstances in confidence. He's like oh hey! That totally happened to a friend of mine one time!! And then he hooks her and Laura up with the fancy doctor his friend went to, and offers to pay for whatever they end up doing, against all of Greta's protestations that it's totally too much, Pete, you're not even my boss anymore, we're doing fine, omg please do not feel like you have to fly my not-girlfriend out here too. But Pete's always been really good at ignoring stuff his friends say after he's already decided to help them, so he unscrupulously makes Greta book an appointment under threat of outing her to the entire media, which she does because she _is_ curious where this baby came from and she _would_ like to see Laura again. 

So on the appointed day, Pete has someone pick Laura up at the airport (she's like, "aahhh is this seriously your life??" and Greta's like "lol no, 99% of the time this is NOTHING LIKE my life") and they meet up at the fempreg research place or whatever which is probably in some fancy huge hospital in Chicago I'm too lazy to research. They submit themselves to a battery of blood tests and ultrasounds and idek, hospital stuff, and while they have to wait a couple of days for the big results, they do learn right away that Laura's going to have a baby boy and Greta's going to have twin girls. Which....they couldn't have found out from anyone before? idk. Greta starts to think that maybe she'll need more help than just her mom and the dudes from her band who had volunteered as soon as they found out.

ALSO, this is the first time that L and G have even seen each other since that one ~fateful night~ and for a little while they are extremely awkward at each other because they've only been phone friends since, and they've never sat down and talked about their relationship. It's all ambiguous and open-ended and stuff! _Will they or won't they???_

It doesn't take long for all Greta's unvoiced worries over whether the ~spark would still be there or if they'd just happened to have marvelous chemistry just one time to be put to rest, though. Laura can't keep her eyes off her, and the feeling is entirely mutual; they keep awkwardly eyefucking behind the doctor's back and just goddddd once they get over the awkward everything feels all urgent and they probably surreptitiously bang in an exam room while waiting for the nurse to show up at some point. The taxi ride back to Greta's place is unbeeeaaaaarable, because all they want is to be naked, is that too much to ask for?! Is it?? In the end it is not, and after what feels like a really long time they get back to the apartment and have lots of really enthusiastic sex which I am too lazy to go into detail about right now.

-

In the morning they wake up together and it is super cute. There is cuddling and pillow talk and not-at-all-competitive comparison of baby bumps (Greta is winning, because twins) and then they cook brunch and bond over all the weird things they're into eating. The brunch they come up with is probably something like eggs and bacon and fettucini alfredo and kale and chocolate pudding with hot sauce in it, if not something even larger that clashes even worse. 

Laura had cleared her schedule so they could wait together for the results of all the fancy expensive genetic tests to come in, for moral support and stuff, so they spend it bumming around Greta's apartment watching terrible TV and having all of the sex and geeking out over songwriter things. Laura probably tags along to one or two Gold Motel practices, where the rest of the band very politely pretends that they can't tell that Laura and Greta are totally doing it. These practices take place at the Empires thunderdome because of plot necessity. It is completely plausible that if Gold Motel had an EP to write and record on short notice that they would go to Max with it, shhh.

Faster than they had expected (Laura's flight back isn't for another week!) they get a big envelope with their test results in it. Maybe it is delivered by courier rather than the regular mail just for extra drama. They're a little nervous to open it — the people at the hospital had explained all the science behind how this could actually happen, but it still seems all kinds of UNLIKELY. Greta kind of likes the idea that her babies are _from Laura_ , but she's tried to keep herself from getting too hung up on it, just in case. 

They probably spend a long time just LOOKING at the envelope, and then Laura's like "Fuck it, ready?" and they open it on a count of three and then have to sit down on the floor right there in the front hall because it confirms that o m g they actually DID knock each other up (Laura is a little smug). It is amazing and also hoooooly fuck.

There's a lot of face-clutching and hand-grabbing and Greta keeps going "Holy fuck we're going to be moms!" and Laura keeps laughing and going "I know, right? I know!"

"This calls for a celebration," Greta says, helping Laura up. There's a definite bounce in her step as she heads for the kitchen. 

Laura brings the envelope with the results with her and keeps glancing at them like they'll change if she looks away for too long. 

"We've got....orange juice. And milk." Neither of which are very celebration-y. Greta wants to toast this, but all the options in her liquor cabinet are off-limits to both of them right now, obviously. 

"We could go out for smoothies," Laura suggests, hooking her chin over Greta's shoulder.

Which is how the end up jammed together at a tiny cafe table in a corner of the cluttered vegetarian sandwich shop down the street that does smoothies. They're being THAT couple, all schmoopy eyes and low-level incessant PDA everywhere, but Greta can't bring herself to care. They're having _babies_.

She shares this observation with Laura for maybe the fifth time since the retrieved their smoothies from the counter, and Laura grins and leans into her just like she's done the other five times. 

"Allll the babies, all for us. Most people start with just one, you know."

"We're just ambitious," Greta laughs. "Besides, we'll make it work. Your sister still wants to adopt, right?"

"Yeah," Laura says, then, "Oh, shit. That's more complicated now, isn't it?"

Greta frowns, and Laura flaps her hands and elaborates. "Because it's yours too now — or it always was, but now we _know_ — I can't just go adopting your kid away like that, it's not right."

"You can so," Greta says, reflexively. "I mean, sure, there'll be legal stuff, but I'm not going to tell you how to live your life just because I accidentally got you pregnant." Greta can't help but giggle behind her hand a little, because seriously, if there were ever words she never expected to say...

Laura smiles a little half-smile and fiddles with the paper from her straw. "What if you get attached, though?"

Greta squeezes her hand. "What if _you_ get attached?"

Laura's smile grows a little bit. "She only lives in Long Island, I can visit any time. And I already swore a blood oath to be the best aunt ever before any of this even started, so."

"So if I start to miss him I can visit you and we can both visit the kid," Greta says. "He'll have two of the best aunts ever."

"Really?"

"I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but I don't even know how my life is going to have room for two tiny humans in it right now, much less three. I'm not going to go berserk and try to hoard all the babies to myself."

Laura laughs. "Oh good. Me neither, in case you were worried."

"That's settled, then," Greta says, even though it's not really, not all the way. There's still a million and one things that have changed, now that they're officially going to be parents together. Whether they're together, for one thing — the ambiguous cross-country friends-with-occasional-benefits thing they had going had seemed perfectly natural a week ago, but Greta's not sure what happens to something like that when you throw babies into the equation. 

-

So now their official business is done but Laura's still there for almost a week, so she resumes her thing of just tagging along as Greta goes about her everyday life. 

"I feel like I'm being a terrible host," Greta says at some point. "Isn't there anything interesting you'd rather do?"

"Interesting, like, tourist stuff? Not really," Laura says. 

At maybe the second writing/recording session, Laura sidles up to Greta while the guys are taking a break to work out some guitar stuff and goes "I think he's sweet on you." She's grinning, and looks really happy with herself for having sussed this bit of information out.

"Who is? And 'sweet on me'? Are you from an actual prairie?"

"Max is," Laura whispers conspiratorially. "No, don't look now. And who knows, maybe I am. Maybe it's just a good phrase that everyone should use more often; it's how he _is_."

Greta beams, then struggles to keep her face neutral, because she just might be harboring a few sweet feelings for Max since the last time they're bands played together, but — "It's not like it matters," she sighs. "Things are about to get all......complicated with me, and besides, there's you."

Laura makes a face at her and Greta laughs despite herself.

"What? _What?_ "

"Way to shoot him down before you even give him a chance, jeez," Laura says, rolling her eyes.

This is not a good conversation to be having right here in front of everyone, so Greta shushes her and tries to squash down the feeling of misapprehension when Laura goes over and chats with Max out of earshot later. Surely she wouldn't be talking about....feelings. That would just be rude, going behind Greta's back like that. 

True to Greta's worst fears, though, Max offers to walk her to her car after they wrap up under the guise of carrying a heavy case for her. Laura is nowhere to be seen. Greta had parked in the driveway, so the walk out to her car is mercifully short, at least.

"What did she say to you?" Greta asks, taking the case from Max once they get there. 

"She told me I should...oh, never mind, this is stupid."

Greta closes the trunk of her car and leans against it, curious. "No, what was it?"

"Do you want to get coffee sometime?" Max is....blushing? It's kind of really cute, which is not fair; Greta is charmed into agreeing in spite of herself. Max blushes more as they set a date, then promises to see her soon and retreats back into the house. 

Greta texts Laura that the bus is leaving, and a couple minutes later Laura appears around the corner, from where she had apparently been taking a walk around the block. Greta shakes her head and pops the passenger door open. 

"Okay, you were right, he's crushing pretty hard," she says when Laura gets in. 

Laura does mini victory arms. "Told you so!"

"You didn't need to go and.....set things up, though. It probably would've happened by itself eventually in some non-super-awkward way."

Laura wilts a little bit. "You know how every group of friends has the one who's the matchmaker? I'm that person. It's like a compulsion, I just see people who should be together and I can't help it."

"Even when one of them is the person you're currently dating?"

"Usually I'm not dating anyone, so it's not an issue," Laura says. "Sorry if I fucked everything up."

Greta purses her lips. "Just....this isn't some kind of passive-aggressive test to see if I'll choose you or him, is it? Because I promise I'd always choose you."

"Oh whoa, no, nothing like that," Laura says. "It's just....I'm leaving on Friday, and he's right here, and I like you and you deserve to have nice things, you know? Who knows how long it would've taken you to to get it together on your own."

"Or if we even ever will," Greta reminds her. "We still haven't even been on one date yet, he's got plenty of time to freak out and head for the hills. Or turn out to be garden variety not-interested, there's always that."

Laura gives her the side-eye. "Are _you_ interested?"

".....Maybe," Greta says, then, "Look, this wasn't something I ever even thought about until today!" when Laura's expression turns to one of frank disbelief. 

-

All too soon, Friday rolls around and Laura has to leave and it's sad, but before that happens, Greta drags her along on a different coffee date. "It's for moral support," she says. They had agreed to meet at Bill's actual house, for secrecy purposes, but he's somehow still late getting there, so Laura and Greta have to sit in the driveway like creepers for twenty minutes. Greta's starting to worry that he forgot he said she could come over, but then he shows up and ushers them both inside like nothing ever happened.

"Had to pick Evie up from play group," is his excuse, and then he actually does make them coffee, which is maybe the most civilized Greta's ever seen Bill Beckett behave. 

Laura and Evie make friends almost instantly, and whatever four-year-olds do at play groups was apparently not enough to wear her out on playing, because she pulls Laura into the den and insists they build a block city to rival all block cities. 

Greta stays in the kitchen with Bill and mines him for advice on secret child rearing, which it turns out he feels unqualified to give since he ultimately decided to make his daughter's existence public. 

"People are going to find out anyway," he says, spreading his hands expansively. "You're really not doing yourself any favors by looking like you have something to hide."

"What if I don't want anyone to find out, ever," she presses. 

"Children are one of life's great joys. You may find that you want to share every moment," Bill says, beaming.

Greta feels that she's burned through this conversation's allotment of _'but what if I don't'_ already, so she tries a different tack. "What about you? What made you want to keep Evie secret initially."

A cloud crosses William's face. "Fans. The public. The media. But your band is at a level where — no offense intended — but you're small enough you simply don't have the kind of attention that I had to deal with."

"So if you had started off where you are now, you wouldn't have bothered to keep her secret at all?"

"Definitely not," Bill says. Greta slightly wants to punch things. 

The visit doesn't last much longer after that, though Greta gets drafted into helping construct a block skyscraper when she sticks her head in to tell Laura they're leaving. Five minutes later, William comes to check on them and gets pulled in too, and they exit as gracefully as they can.

"We'll just have to learn from what he does, not from what he says," Laura says when they get back to Greta's apartment. Greta had spent the entire ride home seething about unhelpful self-righteous fame-obsessed dickbags, which Laura had put up with very patiently. 

"But he failed _miserably_ at it; people were talking nearly before she was born," Greta says.

"So we'll find out why, and then you can do the opposite of that," Laura says. Which is how they spend an entire afternoon on William Beckett's wikipedia page, drafting up lists of do's and don'ts and drinking multiple cups of tea to keep themselves going.

"Basically," Laura says, after they close out the last article. "Just don't get seen in public pregnant."

"And don't make any suspicious cryptic blog posts," Greta says. "I think I can manage that."

"I know you can, you're great," Laura says, snuggling into Greta's side and pulling the couch blanket up over them both. 

"I wish you didn't have to leave tomorrow," Greta says, combing her fingers through Laura's hair.

"Me too," Laura says. "Well, I am ready to be back home. But I wish that didn't mean being not here."

"Catch-22," Greta says. 

"The worst," Laura agrees. "You know you can come and visit me any time, right?"

"As soon as we can go back on tour," Greta says. "I see a lot of east coast touring my future, actually."

There is lots more snuggling and schmoopy talk and then when Laura leaves there are tears at the airport that they both blame on the hormones. 

Then the rest of what happens until the babies arrive is totally boring and shall be glossed over! Except for Greta's little budding romance with Max, that is adorable and faily and ends with them hanging out like *all the time*. It probably requires some gentle nudging from Laura at first, because their first date is a DISASTER by any traditional metric — Greta shows up at the cafe they said they'd meet at, and when Max finally gets there (10 minutes late), he's got a Sean Van Vleet tagging along with him, wtf.

Apparently when Max had said he was leaving now to go get coffee with Greta, by Sean see you tomorrow, Sean hadn't been able to tell it was a date-date and had invited himself along, and then complained so much about how bored he was/how he had zero plans for the rest of the afternoon/how much coffee would hit the spot right now, that Max didn't have the heart to un-invite him. Max explains all of this to Greta after Sean has left of his own accord, and is like "So you probably won't even WANT a re-do, which I get, because Sean is never going to stop being Sean, and I can't promise he'll never do any stupid shit again, but if you diiiiiid...."

And Greta's like "I actually had a lot of fun just hanging out with you guys, though I cannot actually believe one person can be that oblivious. Perhaps he was trying to sabotage our date ON PURPOSE?"

Max shoots that down; he explains how Sean is always reminding him he could have a life outside of the band if he wanted, and besides what possible motivation could he have??

"Maybe he's in looooooove," Greta says, half kidding, but the look on Max's face makes her think again.

After that, their relationship is half going on boring straight couple-y dates and falling for each other, and half sneaking around Sean's back like a pair of teenage spies trying to figure out if he's ACTUALLY in love with Max. Greta theorizes that he totally is, and Max keeps saying he won't believe it till he sees CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE. Greta suggests that they lure him into a threesome and see how he acts, but by this point she's suuuuper pregnant and not actually physically comfortable with the idea of a threesome, so they put that one on the back burner.

Greta secretly hopes that Sean and Max do start something — with or without threesome intervention, though with would be fun — so that she's not the only one in this relationship who has a SO. She's always telling stories about Laura and while Max is never like ew stop talking about your girlfriend that's so weird to me, he doesn't have any stories of his OWN to share, so they're kind of one-sided conversations ;____; Probably at some point in the distant future, Max and Sean do get their shit together, and they form this big poly amorphous blob of a family and help Greta raise her babies and arrange their tours such that Gold Motel and Empires are never away at the same time and there's always someone to go over and help Greta's mom with the bbs if she needs it (Greta can't take them on tour because secrecy! They go on a lot of really short little weekend tours for the first while after they're born.)

And they're all happy and everything's great, the end!


End file.
